Why CMOs Need to Experiment with AI

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Jason Cottrell is the Founder and CEO of Myplanet. Jason guides the strategic decisions that have led Myplanet to become the company some of the biggest brands in the world turn to for guidance, partnership, and success in digital software implementations and smarter interfaces. Jason was a recipient of the Toronto Board of Trade Entrepreneur Under 30 Award and his commitment to responsible business practices has ensured Myplanet is a certified BCorp year after year.

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Machine learning and artificial intelligence have the potential to parse data and provide insights like never before, changing the way marketers are able to understand and implement short and long-term strategic decisions. The time to start implementing AI strategies is now, says Jason Cottrell, Founder and CEO of Myplanet.

CMOs trying to to predict what the hottest trends and top products will be in the future have a hard time of things— the biggest consumer trends and products of today defy what we would have assumed was possible just twenty years ago. But you don’t need a crystal ball to know one thing for certain: businesses that want to be successful long-term are going to need to offer more than just great products.

They’ll need to be experts not only in their product vertical, but also in the realm of customer service. Because customer service is going to be the differentiating factor going forward, no matter what you’re offering. And the way to ensure you provide top-shelf customer experiences, and to be certain you efficiently and effectively answer customer concerns, is through AI.

Great customer expectations

It’s no secret that consumers have increasingly high standards for the companies they do business with. The advent of social media has given greater connectivity between consumers and providers than ever before. And as the need to respond in real time to requests, concerns, complaints, and suggestions grows in importance, companies that understand how to be always on and available will see their connection to the customer deepen and their margins continue to grow.

But whether it’s AI-powered chatbots or IoT devices that keep the customer connected on the go, customer experiences will extend far beyond just quick response-times and on-the-go consumer-provider interactions. Being able to personalize offers to consumers, to tailor experiences and products to suit their specific needs and wants, will be a key component in providing the kind of customer experience consumers will expect in future.

To be met with the thing they want where and when they want it will be a huge market advantage. One effective CMOs can’t afford to pass up. But all of these things are really only possible with AI.

To understand what it is their customers are looking for, CMOs will need to embrace the huge data advantage that’s already at their fingertips but just out of reach. Humans can’t pore over information quickly enough or at a great enough depth to gather the insights that machine learning can provide. But using AI-powered digital marketing assistants like Q to provide real-time updates about a customer journey can provide insight into the ways customers interact with a brand and where they’re succeeding and failing at finding the information they want.

Smaller risks, bigger rewards

Companies that resist the AI wave—especially CMOs that aren’t willing to do the early-stage experimentation now—will not only be lagging behind their competitors in the future, but may be cut out of the chance to compete with them altogether. There is no bigger opportunity than in the ways we connect with and satisfy our consumers. Companies that miss these early opportunities may not be around to make later-stage efforts at all.

Early investment in the technologies that power machine learning and artificial intelligence will offer marketers the chance to test on smaller groups, to use the insight from those early tests to pivot where necessary and continue to grow where it makes sense, and to progress steadily down the road towards full and powerful AI implementations that can offer not just high-level information but personalized, contextualized results— for themselves and for the customers they’re connecting with.

Marketers need to be nimble. Marketers need to respond quickly to changing market trends. Marketers need to have insight into what consumers want, when they want it, and where they are when they want it. AI can not only gather the data behind those insights, but it can start to parse out the insights, powering through massive quantities of information to provide succinct, meaningful feedback. And all of that is going to be a prerequisite to providing the kinds of customer experiences that match customer expectations.